TikTok ran a deepfake ad of an AI MrBeast hawking iPhones for $2 — and it’s the ‘tip of the iceberg’::As AI spreads, it brings new challenges for influencers like MrBeast and platforms like TikTok aiming to police unauthorized advertising.

  • AdmiralShat@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    Everyone with a brain has been saying this would happen for the last decade, and yet there was no legislation put in place to target this behavior

    Why does every law need to be reactionary? Why can’t we see a situation developing and get ahead of it by legislating the very obvious things it can be used for?

    • camr_on@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      How about a real answer:

      All but a few of our legislators have any idea how technology/Internet works. Anything about the Internet that is obvious to the crowd on lemmy will probably never cross the radar of a geriatric legislator who never needs to even write their own emails bc an aide will do it

  • PocketRocket@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Oh boy. This is all moving very quickly. People already fall for simple SMS scams, I can only imagine just how many more will be falling victim to this trash in months/years to come.

    • CeeBee@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      People have already been falling for scams that “Elon Musk” was promoting. Naturally I’m talking about these crypto schemes run by scammers on YouTube using a deepfake of Musk. It’s been happening for about two years now.

      • FilthyHands@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Bill Gates has been giving away his fortune to some lucky email recipients every year now since the days when you had to pay for the internet by the hour.

    • slaacaa@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Just imagine fans getting a facetime call from a Taylor Swift, explaining they won half-price tickets to an exlusive fan event. Then “Taylor” has to drop out to make the other calls, but will leave them a link for the purchase - only valid for 15 minutes, as of course many others are waiting for this opportunity.

  • GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    This is the entire basis of using an adblocker like ublock origin. It is purely defensive. You don’t know what an advertising (malvertising) network will deliver, and neither does the website you’re on (Tiktok, Google, Yahoo, eBay, etc etc etc). With generative AI and video ads and the lack of content checking on the advertising network this will just get worse and worse. I mean, why spend money on preventing this? The targeted ads and user data collection is where the money’s at, baby!

    Related note, installing uBO on my dad’s PC some 8 years ago was far more effective than any kind of virus scanner or whatever. Allowing commerce on the Internet was a mistake. That’s the root of all this bullshit, anyway.

    • Moneo@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Fuck ads in general. I don’t care if they are legitimate or not I don’t want to be mentally assaulted every time I try to browse a website.

    • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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      1 year ago

      Honestly ads aren’t that bad when done right. For instance, the yellow pages had ads but they didn’t follow you wherever you went. We need ads that people want to look at. If I’m trying to find something g to buy I don’t mind looking at an ad. I just don’t want it to be everywhere and end up being malious

      • SCB@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        We need ads that people want to look at

        Welcome to the pro-data-collection team! We’re wildly unpopular online.

    • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Although I’d say a good 99% of all ads are terrible, I have yet to find any that are absolutely egregious when visiting sites like FurAffinity. Totally depends on the site and what ad services they chose or are forced into if they have ads. Also where and they are placed.

    • stolid_agnostic@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I never thought of it in security terms but that makes sense. If nothing else, having it installed makes for a better web experience.

    • herr@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Currently largest and most successful YouTuber on the platform (by a wide margin), started out by doing challenge videos about himself (24h in ice, that kinda stuff) that he’d invite friends to as the goody sidekicks causing mischief and making his challenges a little harder/more interesting.

      These days, his stuff has transformed into a media powerhouse, all of it is still kinda falling into a challenge category. Now with far higher stakes and involving other people in competitions against each other - think “kids vs adults - group with most people still in the game after 5 days wins $500k” - where several days (sometimes months) of filming all gets cut down to one 10-20 minute long video.

      There’s also just “look at this thing” videos like “$1 to $10,000,00 car” where him and his friends check out increasingly expensive cars until they eventually get a whole bridge cordoned off to drive in the most expensive car in the world.

      He does some philanthropy, like his “plant 10 million trees” campaign and makes money through sponsorship deals and advertising his own brands - they’re currently running their own line of (fair trade?) chocolate bars that are available (in most places?) in the US, which kids will buy because of the brand recognition, leaving them with a ton of profits.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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        1 year ago

        How is he simultaneously so famous and yet no one knows who he is? I feel more people would know who Linus is than him. Until about a year ago I’d never even heard the name.

        • TORFdot0@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I’ve never watched a Mr Beast video but it sounds like he makes a lot of content that would mainly appeal to zoomers which explain his apparent high popularity but low cultural impact

        • Default_Defect@midwest.social
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          1 year ago

          Mr Beast and Skibidi toilet are two things that are viewed by millions upon millions, I’ve never watched them and neither have ever been recommended to me by youtube.

          Felt like I was taking crazy pills for a while, but now I just consider myself lucky.

    • Pistcow@lemm.ee
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      I believe he is a Youtuber. That’s as far as I’ve gotten.

    • PocketRocket@lemmy.world
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      If memory serves (being knowledge I gleaned from a podcast). He’s a YouTuber that has carved out a popular niche in philanthropy of sorts. All for views of course, but some philanthropy none the less. Very popular I think with, I want to say Gen Alpha aged kids. A lot of people have imitated the content style in the last few years. So I guess there is instant brand recognition and trust there for a lot of people.

      • toy_boat_toy_boat@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        fwiw i read that comment and thought, ‘hmm, i don’t either’ and then i went and watched a few of his videos. they’re pretty awesome in a feel-good way. nice to see someone using tons of money to make other people happy and do good things for a change. now i’m subscribed to his channel :)

  • Matriks404@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The more I hear about AI-generated content and other crap that is posted online these days, I wonder if I should just start reading books instead, maybe even learn to play on a musical instrument and leave virtual world altogether.

    • ???@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Plagiarized books entirely written by an AI are nor far-fetched. Get ready for a shitty reality.

        • evranch@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          Because writing a knockoff book takes time and effort, and getting an AI to do it does not.

          The same question applies to many fields. Why get AI to write a plagiarized tweet or Reddit comment? It’s a lot less effort than a book, yet both platforms are plagued with bot comments.

    • Jeanschyso@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Keep informed so you don’t buy AI-written books. Better know what’s going on instead of letting the world happen to you imo.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    TikTok ran an advertisement featuring an AI-generated deepfake version of MrBeast claiming to give out iPhone 15s for $2 as part of a 10,000 phone giveaway.

    The sponsored video, which Insider viewed on the app on Monday, looked official as it included MrBeast’s logo and a blue check mark next to his name.

    Two days ago, Tom Hanks posted a warning to fans about a promotional video hawking a dental plan that featured an unapproved AI version of himself.

    “Realism, efficiency, and accessibility or democratization means that now this is essentially in the hands of everyday people,” Henry Ajder, an academic researcher and expert in generative AI and deepfakes, told Insider.

    Not all AI-generated ad content featuring celebrities is inherently bad, as a recent campaign coordinated between Lionel Messi and Lay’s demonstrates.

    “If someone releases an AI-generated advert without disclosure, even if it’s perfectly benign, I still think that should be labeled and should be positioned to an audience in the way that they can understand,” Ajder said.


    The original article contains 518 words, the summary contains 168 words. Saved 68%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • 9thSun@midwest.social
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    1 year ago

    I read this title last night and thought it was a story about AI making an amalgamation of MrBeast and Stephen Hawking to shill iPhones

  • foggy@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    It would be a good time to start a paid online community that has a lengthy vetting process for accuracy and authenticity of all content.

      • Critical_Insight@feddit.uk
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        1 year ago

        It’s either paid by the users or by the advertisers, or do you have a better plan on how to fund running such platform?

        • RBG@discuss.tchncs.de
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          Nope, I don’t, otherwise I’d do it because it would be a massive change to whats out there.

          I was a bit too short on my comment I admit. I am laughing about the suggestion because making a completely new community with paid access from the start will doom it immediately. It needs to have a certain pull to get users to actually pay something and so far I’d say thats either failed or platforms have not quite taken off.

          Same as converting a free community to a paid access model, for that you just need to look at what happens to Twitter. Its a slow bleed but it certainly damaged the platform. Instagram is next it seems with the ad-free tiering that will no doubt lead to obnoxious ads. We will see if they achieved the necessary pull to keep people there or not.

          • foggy@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Yes, because SomethingAwful has struggled over the decades so much.

            • RBG@discuss.tchncs.de
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              Ok, they have like 200.000 users registered. I know its historically an important site but in terms of userbase that is nothing.

              And do they have a lengthy vetting process for accuracy and authenticity in place as you are asking for?

              • foggy@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Who said this platform would be the biggest?

                You’re making a lot of assumptions here, and it’s coming off as seal-lioning so I’m going to disengage from you here. Cheers.

                • RBG@discuss.tchncs.de
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                  1 year ago

                  Well, the thing is that only big platforms struggle with the problems of the topic we discuss here. Smaller platforms just do not have the userbase size where it would be viable to try and scam them for money. Which is why this happens on tiktok in the example up here.

                  So I just don’t agree with your viewpoint and you don’t with mine. I take no offense to that and I hope you did not either, that was definitely not my intention.

      • foggy@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yes, paid

        Guess who wouldn’t be in the target demographic?

        Moderation is costly if your dedicated to only putting out accurate and truthful content. And people will pay for that accuracy when the media landscape becomes saturated with AI deep fakes.

    • Boogiepop@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      So you see this as specifically a tiktok problem and not a tech problem? Do you think it won’t/hasn’t happened elsewhere, and will be only a tiktok problem? I don’t use tiktok, or care about it but I feel like every problem with it is something endemic to social media platforms run by businesses atm.

      • scorpious@lemmy.world
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        Sorry, just blurting an admittedly off-topic idea. No, I don’t think TikTok is the problem here…

        But why isn’t TikTok banned? It is cancer.

        • HipHoboHarold@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          So is all social media. People were saying the same about Facebook. People are saying the same about Twitter. People are also saying the same about reddit. TikTok is just the main popular right now.

          • wildginger@lemmy.myserv.one
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            People were right about facebook and twitter, and arent even that wrong about reddit.

            I dunno man, maybe social media aint a great idea

    • arthurpizza@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Maybe it’s a bad idea for the government to completely shutdown a private business?

      Maybe it’s because of the first amendment violations the government silencing a social network would entail.

      Maybe it’s because we are attempting to be a democracy and have due process available to all entities that operate within the United States?

      Just a thought.

    • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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      Because its a overstep of government power. How would that be enforced? The US couldn’t even manage to get rid of alcohol let alone software.

        • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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          What about side loading and third party app stores? They would have to patrol peoples devices.

          Not to mention its a little concerning that apps can be pulled from the app store for any reason. They bill would allow them to pull any app including ones that protect peoples privacy and freedom.

          • wildginger@lemmy.myserv.one
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            1 year ago

            … what bill? I literally just said there was no government involvement.

            You can side load a social media app all you like, if its pulled from the major stores it has lost its lifeblood. And, uh. Most apps can be pulled for nearly any reason, cause there is no government owned public software store. The company store can kinda do as it likes.